after picking the subsystems I wanted and assigning
Propeller I/O pins to each of them, the design challenge
for this project became developing a circuit board layout
that tied everything together, and was easy to build and
easy to use. I enlisted Dip Trace for board design and
PCBWay for board fabrication, and can offer both my
highest recommendation.
It was my first experience with Dip Trace, so I had to
climb the learning curve, but the tool suite is full-featured
and provided everything I needed. PCBWay was a
pleasure to deal with — excellent product quality, fast, and
very reasonably priced. For the Amigo, I ended up with a
4” x 4” two-sided board
with through-hole
components for
everything except the SD
card socket, which was
only available as surface-mount (Figure 4 and
Figure 5).
Build it
Yourself or
Build the Kit
There are several
ways that you can create
your own Mentor’s
The Nuts & Volts kit provides everything you need to
build your own Mentor’s Friend — just add a monitor,
keyboard, and power supply, and
you’re in business. Kit contents
include a 4” x 4” through-hole
circuit board; a 40-pin DIP
Propeller chip with associated
crystal, EEPROM, and sockets; a
32K SRAM chip and socket; 3. 3
VDC and 5 VDC power supplies; a
2 GB SD card and socket; a reset
button; and the connectors and
components for a VGA monitor,
PS/2 keyboard, left/right audio
channel, and Wii Classic Controller.
The EEPROM comes pre-loaded
with Color BASIC, so there’s no
need to worry about programming
the Propeller.
In addition, the kit provides an
onboard Experimenter’s Section
which consists of a small solderless
breadboard, four LEDs, and two
tact switches, and headers for
Vintage Computing
FIGURE 5:
Schematic of
Amigo power
supply and
Experimenter’s
Section.
FIGURE 6: The Nuts & Volts kit includes everything needed to build
your own Amigo, including a pre-programmed EEPROM and a 2 GB
SD card with starter files.
40 December 2015
